Japanese Buddhism is sometimes called “funeral Buddhism” contemptuously. Buddhism is often criticized in that it serves only the dead and does not useful for the living. In truth, the main duties of Buddhist monks are to perform funeral services, maintain graves and perform memorial services for the dead in Japan today. Modern Buddhist leaders in Japan tried to argue against such criticism and insisted that Buddhism in origin was not a religion for the dead but for the living. In the (...) post-modern situation, however, the philosophy of the dead is becoming necessary instead of the philosophy of the living that has been prevalent in modern ages. The living human beings cannot live without thinking of the dead. For example, the war victims in Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Nanjing and other places do not forgive us even today. In this situation, it is necessary to evaluate Buddhist tradition in Japan that shows us the way how to go with the dead. In this paper, first, I will introduce the philosophy of Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962) who insisted the existential co-operation with the dead under the influence of Zen Buddhism and next, examine some Mahayana Buddhist sutras from the viewpoint of the relation between the living and the dead. (shrink)

人間は本来的に、公共の秩序に収まらない何かを抱えて生きる存在である。常識として通用してきた倫理道徳では対応できない問題が起きたとき、そこに見えてくるのは何なのか。“人間”の領域、つまり倫理的な世界をは み出したところで出会う「他者」、さらにはその極限にある「死者」との関わりを、著者は、古典的な仏教学ではない“現代に生きる仏教”の視座から、根源的に問い直そうとする。倫理を超える新たな地平を示すと同時に 、日本仏教の思想的成果を丹念に抽出し、それを広範な哲学・思想史の中に位置づけ、鍛え直した著書。初版刊行後の理論的展開を書き下ろしで加えた、待望の文庫版。.

1. Meiji shisōka ron -- 2. Kindai Nihon to Bukkyō.

末木文美士、中島隆博、若松英輔、安藤礼二、中島岳志、死者と霊性をめぐっての白熱した討議をまとめる。.

日本において「近代仏教」はどのように形成され、展開していったのか。本書は、こうした問いを念頭に、思想と実践の両面から、代表的知識人の営為に光をあてる。また、浄土、日蓮、禅という三系統について、それぞれ の複雑な思想動向を取りあげていく。幅広い視点から、近代仏教の諸相をとらえた充実の書。.

哲学を厳密さの檻から解放し、日本の近代思想を土台に豊かな思索の実践を繰り広げる。.

カミの言葉から人の言葉へ。声の伝達から文字による記録へ。思想はどのように記録され、何を媒介にして人びとに伝えられてきたのか。その実態と変遷をさぐる。.

秩序と規範はいかにもたらされ、どのようにいだかれるか。イエ、クニ、社会、「国家」など、さまざまな位相における秩序と規範のあり方、時代のなかでのその変容について検証する。.

いま、なぜ日本の思想なのか。出発点としての問いかけ。近代において日本思想の研究が立ち上がって行く過程、日本的なるものへの問い、多様な「日本」観などを検討する。.

本巻は、仏教論理学を存在論、認識論、論理学、真理論、言語哲学の各視点から解説し、さらに全知者・輪廻、刹那滅の論証など、最新の研究成果を通じて、その基本的構造と現代的意義を示す。.

There are two cultural principles operative in contemporary Japan; one is a relatively new principle derived from the West, and the other a traditional Eastern principle.These two principles are, at least in contemporary Japan, contradictory to one another: the Western principle is considered to be an anti-naturalistic one stressing technique, while the traditional Eastern principle is essentially one founded on naturalism.

The paper is based on a review of research on media selection and related topics on the one hand and on an explorative pilot survey on the other. In summarising the review, the authors propose that the factors explaining media choice be grouped into five categories: (1) the properties of the media itself affect its choice, (2) properties of the user affect media choice, (3) the communication situation plays an important role, (4) macro factors explain media choice, and (5) media (...) choice can be explained as the outcome of a dynamic multiparty negotiation process. The pilot survey compares Japanese and Finnish students’ preference of media in various communication situations. The survey results encourage reserving, local macro factors or culture, a certain amount of explanatory force in explaining media choice. (shrink)

This paper reports the findings of a comparative study in which students’ perceived attainment of the objectives of an engineering ethics education and their attitude towards engineering ethics were investigated and compared. The investigation was carried out in Japan and Malaysia, involving 163 and 108 engineering undergraduates respectively. The research method used was based on a survey in which respondents were sent a questionnaire to elicit relevant data. Both descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were performed on the data. The results (...) of the analyses showed that the attainment of the objectives of engineering ethics education and students’ attitude towards socio-ethical issues in engineering were significantly higher and positive among Japanese engineering students compared to Malaysian engineering students. Such findings suggest that a well-structured, integrated, and innovative pedagogy for teaching ethics will have an impact on the students’ attainment of ethics education objectives and their attitude towards engineering ethics. As such, the research findings serve as a cornerstone to which the current practice of teaching and learning of engineering ethics education can be examined more critically, such that further improvements can be made to the existing curriculum that can help produce engineers that have strong moral and ethical characters. (shrink)

◎清末の知識人は複数の「文明」から自らの思想資源を探っていったと考察する画期的論考なる.

In this paper, we develop an organization method of page information agents for adaptive interface between a user and a Web search engine. Though a Web search engine indicates a hit list of Web pages to user’s query using a large database, they includes many useless ones. Thus a user has to select useful Web pages from them with page information indicated on the hit list, and actually fetch the Web page for investigating the relevance. Unfortunately, since the page information (...) on a hit list is neither sufficient nor necessary for a user, the adequate information is necessary for valid selection. However which information is adequate depends on a user and a task. Hence we propose adaptive interface AOAI in which different page information agents are organized through man-machine interaction. In AOAI, the page information agents indicating different page information on a hit list like the file-size, network traffic and a page title are prepared at first. A user evaluates them through searching with a search engine, and the agents are organized based on the evaluation. As results, different organizations are achieved depending on a user and a task. Finally we make experiments with subjects and find out AOAI is promising for adaptive interface between a user and a search engine. (shrink)

日本的合理思想の発見。三浦梅園、二宮尊徳から西田幾多郎へと脈々と流れる、西洋とは異なる合理思想の展開。その論理と構造を明快に論じた、出色の日本文化論。.

The industrial society in Japan is now entering into a new era of an advanced information society or a network society. AI as a knowledge information processing technology is becoming an integral part of the society. This emerging era is being supported by the information industry.

Distracted attention is considered responsible for most car accidents, and many functional magnetic resonance imaging researchers have addressed its neural correlates using a car-driving simulator. Previous studies, however, have not directly addressed safe driving performance and did not place pedestrians in the simulator environment. In this fMRI study, we simulated a pedestrian-rich environment to explore the neural correlates of three types of safe driving performance: accurate lane-keeping during driving, the braking response to a preceding car, and the braking response to (...) a crossing pedestrian. Activation of the bilateral frontoparietal control network predicted high driving accuracy. On the other hand, activation of the left posterior and right anterior superior temporal sulci preceding a sudden pedestrian crossing predicted a slow braking response. The results suggest the involvement of different cognitive processes in different components of driving safety: the facilitatory effect of maintained attention on driving accuracy and the distracting effect of social–cognitive processes on the braking response to pedestrians. (shrink)

Similar to its old history, Japan has a rich traditional and ethical Architecture. Based on these tenets and ethics, different concepts and spaces are formed through the time, as now Japan's ethical and traditional design ideas has its standard principles. Linking the present and the past has always been a momentous criterion in the countries with an old rich Architecture. This fact is indeed important in Japan due to the blend of ethics and religions with peoples` life. Through this idea, (...) three Japanese Architects, Kenzo Tange, Fumihiko Maki and Tadao Ando-who are the only Japanese pritzker prize winners-have well, noticed the need for linking the country's traditional and ethical Architecture criteria with the contemporary Architecture. So, analyzing such projects of these architects prepares a good basis to find out the quality of how traditional and ethical design ideas crystallize in the works of contemporary Japanese architects. The research method for this article is a comparative analysis between the architects` particular projects and Japan's ethical and traditional design ideas, formed through the history of architecture in this country. The contents of this article rely heavily on three bases: 1) study of the historical documents concerning the ethical and traditional design concepts in Japan. 2) The consultancy of leading experts on Asian traditional constructions and ethical architecture specialists from Azad Universities in Tehran. 3) Comparative analysis between the ethical concepts applied in different contemporary works. The results show that the contemporary architects have had good bases for presenting the traditional design concepts as standard principles are all formed in the architecture of Japan today. Meanwhile, it seems that Maki and Ando are more likely to have a conceptual look at Japan's traditions while Tange has a more formal viewpoint. Chronological analysis of the architects` projects shows that despite, all the three architects were impressed by the works of le Corbusier, they were successful to keep contacts with Japan's traditional design concepts. (shrink)